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The Elephant Sculptor

By Eknath Easwaran

In ancient India lived a sculptor renowned for
his life-sized statues of elephants. With trunks curled high, tusks thrust
forward, thick legs trampling the earth, these carved beasts seemed to trumpet
to the sky. One day, a king came to see these magnificent works and to
commission statuary for his palace. Struck with wonder, he asked the sculptor,
“What is the secret of your artistry?”

The sculptor quietly took his measure of the
monarch and replied, “Great king, when, with the aid of many men, I quarry a
gigantic piece of granite from the banks of the river, I have it set here in my
courtyard. For a long time I do nothing but observe this block of stone and
study it from every angle. I focus all my concentration on this task and won’t
allow anything or anybody to disturb me. At first, I see nothing but a huge and
shapeless rock sitting there, meaningless, indifferent to my purposes, utterly
out of place. It seems faintly resentful at having been dragged from its cool
place by the rushing waters. Then, slowly, very slowly, I begin to notice
something in the substance of the rock. I feel a presentiment . . . an outline,
scarcely discernible, shows itself to me, though others, I suspect, would
perceive nothing. I watch with an open eye and a joyous, eager heart. The
outline grows stronger. Oh, yes, I can see it! An elephant is stirring in
there!

“Only then do I start to work. For days
flowing into weeks, I use my chisel and mallet, always clinging to my sense of that
outline, which grows ever stronger. How the big fellow strains! How he yearns
to be out! How he wants to live! It seems so clear now, for I know the one
thing I must do: with an utter singleness of purpose, I must chip away every
last bit of stone that is not elephant. What then remains will be, must be,
elephant.”

When I was young, my grandmother, my spiritual
guide, would often tell just such a story, not only to entertain but to convey
the essential truths of living. Perhaps I had asked her, as revered teachers in
every religion have been asked, “What happens in the spiritual life? What are
we supposed to do?”

My Granny wasn’t a theologian, so she answered
these questions simply with a story like that of the elephant sculptor. She was
showing that we do not need to bring our real self, our higher self, into
existence. It is already there. It has always been there, yearning to be out.
An incomparable spark of divinity is to be found in the heart of each human
being, waiting to radiate love and wisdom everywhere, because that is its
nature. Amazing! This you that sometimes feels inadequate, sometimes becomes
afraid or angry or depressed, that searches on and on for fulfillment, contains
within itself the very fulfillment it seeks, and to a supreme degree.

Indeed, the tranquility and happiness we also
feel are actually reflections of that inner reality of which we know so little.
No matter what mistakes we may have made – and who hasn’t made them? – this
true self is ever pure and unsullied. No matter what trouble we have caused
ourselves and those around us, this true self is ceaselessly loving. No matter
how time passes from us and, with it, the body in which we dwell, this true self
is beyond change, eternal.

Once we have become attentive to the presence
of this true self, then all we really need do is resolutely chip away whatever
is not divine in ourselves. I am not saying this is easy or quick. Quite the
contrary; it can’t be done in a week or by the weak. But the task is clearly
laid out before us. By removing that which is petty and self-seeking, we bring
forth all that is glorious and mindful of the whole. In this there is no loss,
only gain. The chips pried away are of no consequence when compared to the
magnificence of what will emerge. Can you imagine a sculptor scurrying to pick
up the slivers that fall from his chisel, hoarding them, treasuring them,
ignoring the statue altogether? Just so, when we get even a glimpse of the
splendor of our inner being, our beloved preoccupations, predilections, and
peccadillos will lose their glamour and seem utterly drab.

Every time I reflect on this, I am filled with
wonder. Voices can be heard crying out that human nature is debased, that
everything is meaningless, that there is nothing we can do, but the mystics of
every religion testify otherwise. They assure us that in every country, under
adverse circumstances and favorable, ordinary people like you and me have taken
on the immense challenge of the spiritual life and made this supreme discovery.
They have found out who awaits them within the body, within the mind, within
the human spirit. Consider the case of Francis Bernardone, who lived in
Italy in the thirteenth century. I’m focusing on him because we know that, at
the beginning, he was quite an ordinary young man. By day this son of a rich
cloth merchant, a bit of a popinjay, lived the life of the privileged, with its
games, its position, its pleasures. By night, feeling all the vigor of youth,
he strolled the streets of Assisi with his lute, crooning love ballads beneath
candlelit balconies. Life was sweet, if shallow. But then the same force, the
same dazzling inner light, that cast Saul of Tarsus to the earth and made him
cry out, “Not I! Not I! But Christ liveth in me!” – just such a force plunges
our troubadour deep within, wrenching loose all his old ways. He hears the
irresistible voice of his God calling to him through a crucifix, “Francis,
Francis, rebuild my church.” And this meant not only the Chapel of San Damiano
that lay in ruins nearby, not only the whole of the Church, but that which was
closest of all – the man himself.

This tremendous turnabout in consciousness is
compressed into the Prayer of Saint Francis. Whenever we repeat it, we are
immersing ourselves in the spiritual wisdom of a holy lifetime. Here is the
opening:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

These lines are so deep that no one will ever
fathom them. Profound, bottomless, they express the infinity of the Self. As
you grow spiritually, they will mean more and more to you, without end.

But a very practical question arises here.
Even if we recognize their great depth, we all know how terribly difficult it
is to practice them in the constant give-and-take of life. For more than twenty
years I have heard people, young and old, say that they respond to such
magnificent words – that is just how they would like to be – but they don’t
know how to do it; it seems so far beyond their reach. In the presence of such
spiritual wisdom, we feel so frail, so driven by personal concerns that we
think we can never, never become like Saint Francis of Assisi.

I say to them, “There is a way.” I tell them
that we can change all that is selfish in us into selfless, all that is impure
in us into pure, all that is unsightly into beauty. Happily, whatever our
tradition, we are inheritors of straightforward spiritual practices whose power
can be proved by anyone. These practices vary a bit from culture to culture, as
you would expect, but essentially they are the same. Such practices are our
sculptor’s tools for carving away what is not-us so the real us can
emerge.

Meditation is supreme among all these tested
means for personal change. Nothing is so direct, so potent, so sure for
releasing the divinity within us. Meditation enables us to see the lineaments
of our true self and to chip away the stubbornly selfish tendencies that keep
it locked within, quite, quite forgotten.

In meditation, the inspirational passage is
the chisel, our concentration is the hammer, and our resolute will delivers the
blows. And how the pieces fly! A very small, fine chisel edge, as you know, can
wedge away huge chunks of stone. As with the other basic human tools – the
lever, the pulley – we gain tremendous advantages of force. When we use our
will to drive the thin edge of the passage deep into consciousness, we get the
purchase to pry loose tenacious habits and negative attitudes. The passage,
whether it is from the Bhagavad Gita or The Imitation of Christ or the Dhammapada
of the Buddha, has been tempered in the flames of mystical experience, and its
bite will . . . well, try it and find out for yourself just what it can do. In
the end, only such personal experience persuades.

This excerpt is from the introduction to God Makes the Rivers to Flow, Easwaran's anthology of passages for meditation.